Matthew wrote: "He knew not what hailed him but thought it was love..."

I wonder if Jim simply and quite naturally aspirated the word "ailed", and pronounced in with an aitch.'

Yes, some Sussex speakers still put an H at the start of words which begin with a vowel and drop it from words which actually begin with an H. On the recording of George Townsend singing The Glittering Dewdrops, he starts off carefully singing the chorus as 'O echo, bright echo, the echoing horn' but by the end of the song the h has dropped off Horn and added itself to Echo throughout. And Echoing emerges as Hee-ko-ing, too.

You also still hear 'sin' for 'seen'.

Valmai (Lewes)